Brian Cleeve 1980
Watkins Publishing (No longer in existence.)*
Right Click and ‘Save target as’. This file is zipped.
A Note from the Author
19.1.2000
The purpose of the two books (The House an the Rock & The Seven Mansions) is to invite anyone who is interested to enter onto a new kind of life, that can be called the Path of Obedience – meaning obedience to God’s Will. But before you can sensibly obey any command or guidance you need to know who you are obeying, why you should obey them, and once you are satisfied as to who and why, then how to do it and what may be asked of you.
The only good way to find out is by question and answer – your questions and God’s answers: not a Church’s answers, or a guru’s or a Red Indian medicine man’s, but God’s. Is it possible that God would answer you? The Church will say “No”, because if it said “Yes” it would make itself redundant. It alone knows God’s Will and is eager to tell you. And of course very often what it tells you is wise and good. But also, often enough, it is neither, as many of its victims, from heretics to women, would tell you if they had survived.
In spite of the Church’s disapproval many people have been in direct communication with God; saints and mystics who have been willing to listen to Her. I say “Her”, not “Him”, not because God is a woman in any limited sense, but as a counter balance to the masculine prejudice of Christianity. And common sense should tell us that a mother is a better image of the Creator than a father.
But listening to God, to a silent Voice in your mind that answers your questions and guides your conduct and your life, can be very dangerous, which is one reason, the only good one, why the Roman Catholic Church disapproves. We can be misled. We can hear evil as well as good. And even more dangerous because it is so easy and so seductive, we can hear what we want to hear, and not what God wishes us to hear.
That is why we need to learn how to listen and how to ask good questions. We need to become ready to hear and accept hard answers as well as soft ones. We need to discard our prejudices and certainties as to what God must want, and what She surely cannot want. We must go to Her as children go to school, ready to learn, to be taught.
There is a theory that God is already within us and that all we need do is find Her. And there has to be truth in this. If God was not in some sense “inside” us we could not exist. Our souls are “the Breath of God”; God gives us life and that essential minimum of Grace that allows us to continue to live. But when the theory goes on to tell us that in reality we are God, that God is simply our own Higher or Inner Self, once again common sense says “No!” because what that is really saying is that there is no God. It is as though you were to believe that the light in your light bulb created its self; that there is no mains supply, no generator, no such thing as electricity.
There is another reason as well for rejecting the “I am God” theory. It involves the worship of self. There is a kindred theory that one needs to love one’s self before one can love anyone else. Why? Do you really, truly believe you are loveable? Do you examine your self, and say “I am wonderful!”? If you do, then nothing written here is for you.
Only if you believe that unselfishness is better than selfishness, and that the highest praise anyone can give someone else is to say that they are selfless, can you even begin to accept the idea of entering on a Path of Obedience to God’s Will. “Not my will, God, but Thine.”
To follow this Path means getting rid of self, selfish desires; even desires that seem to be good. Because we cannot know what is really good until God tells us. It is an old saying that the worst thing that can happen to us is to have our prayers answered. “Please God, give me…” Dear God, I need… I must have… I want…” “Please let Jimmy pass his exams.(even though he hasn’t worked for them)… please cure Aunt Mary’s arthritis (although her diet is crazy)…”
All these prayers assume that you know what is good. They also assume that God needs reminders and promptings, “Please remember Cousin Billy and let him get that job…”
If you think in those ways nothing in these pages is likely to appeal to you. But if you are ready to think differently, or to consider a different way of thinking, then the following suggestions may be of use to you.
God knows your real needs far better than you do. If you offer to obey God, She will teach you how to do that. But this means ceasing to obey your self, your own will and desires. You can’t have it both ways. And She will require your obedience seven days a week. You can’t make bargains, like saying “I’ll give you so much of my time but I want days off!”
You must not expect to be admired for what you are setting out to do. The best you should hope for is to be ignored. The likeliest result is amused contempt and a possibility is sheer hatred. When anyone sets out to obey God evil becomes very angry. You may have to endure some very rough periods.
Before all else you will need to cleanse your life. If you were inviting a lover to your house, you would clean it. (If you wouldn’t you are not the sort of person who is likely to read this.) If you are inviting God into your life it needs to be a clean life.
Finally, why should you do this? The best reason is because you want to. The next best is because you feel you should. And not for any reward, even your own salvation, but in order to offer God something, to become Her servant. Is there any better, greater ambition?
* Brian Cleeve did not accept any royalties from the original publishers of the two books which were subsequently priced accordingly.
Back Cover
“What can the author say about a book that claims to be his dialogue with God? What defence can he offer against those who call him a liar or a madman? The only possible defence is the book itself. If it convinces you, the author matters no longer. If it fails to convince you, the author matters still less.
“Here are answers to questions that have troubled my mind, and perhaps yours, for many years. The reason for there being evil in the world. What happens when we die? What is psychic power, and should we seek it? How can we find God? Why are we here? And do animals have souls? Why have all religions been so cruel to women, and so convinced that they alone are right? Why does God allow the innocent to suffer, and the guilty to flourish? Is there really a Devil? Are there really good and evil spirits? Are we alone on our journey, and where are we going?
“I asked these, and a hundred other questions; could not accept some of the answers I received, and came back and back to them, this way and that – a modern, mildly liberal conscience brought up against Reality like a man walking into a wall at night! In my circumstances you might have asked different questions, reacted differently in every way. But the answers would have been the same. Here is the Reality of the world we live in. It is not offered to you as a theory, or a panacea, or Good News. In it you will find a lot of bad news if you think in materialistic terms and are looking for Utopia on earth. Utopia is a long way off, and the road there is full of stones.
“Nor is the book offered to you to pursuade you to do anything, or be anything, or believe anything. It is simply a witness, a witness’ account of being allowed to question God.”
The author was born in Essex in 1921 and now lives in Dublin – his father was Irish. He is a novelist and journalist, with a PHD from the National University of Ireland, and was involved in war service from 1939 to 1945. In 1948 he went to live in South Africa until his expulsion in 1954. He is married, with two grown-up daughters and three grandchildren. His literary output includes many short stories and novels, and most recently a long novel on the Holy Grail in modern times which is still to be published. His next prophetic work is provisionally entitled The Seven Mansions.
THE BEGINNING
I felt a pressure on my forehead. Like a band of pressure, from temple to temple, not heavy, but firm.
I felt the coldness of a Presence, a sense of great suffering.
A voice said, not aloud, but within my mind, I see all that was, and is, and will be.
And then the voice said I shall teach you to hear, and to see, and you must write down what you have seen and heard.
I dreamed I was with a companion, greasy and insinuating, swarthy, glistening with sweat, an oily shining on his skin; his eyes unbearably knowing, his face and smile persuading me towards evil.
- That was a devil, the voice told me.
I saw a hand reaching down towards me. Only a hand, the fingers blunt, covered in a reddish fur, ragged and ugly, striving to grasp hold. Huge and powerful and searching.
- That was a devil’s hand.
I was in a narrow lane, in the dark. Cars came at tremendous speed towards me, a rush of power, overwhelming, terrifying.
- That was an image of the power of evil.
I saw a great company of souls walking in the darkness far away, climbing slowly, carrying lights; small lights like candle flames; a soft, pale blue haze within the darkness. There was a sense of joy, of nearness of triumph, and I thought that I could hear their singing.
- They were on their long road to Paradise.
I saw wheels of fire, red and gold, revolving one within another, like lattice-work, or Chinese carving. But the fire was alive, and moving. This was the soul of a man made perfect, a soul that had completed its journey. The wheels of fire were in reality one continuous wheel, immensely complex, that contained within it all that the man had ever been, and all made perfect. All the lives he had lived through his soul’s evolution, all the ages of each life from birth to wisdom, all his love that had grown in him and with him, until it turned to fire.
And within the wheel there was his spiritual garden, his own fragment of Paradise, a microcosm of our world.
I have often prayed to be made wise, to be given Wisdom.
The voice told me that that was impossible for me. Enlightenment I might have, but never Wisdom, during this life.
I asked how Wisdom could be different from Enlightenment.
- Wisdom knows Perfection, the voice said. It is union with God. Enlightenment is only a momentary vision of a fragment of Perfection. Enlightenment is seeing for a brief while. Wisdom is possessing, for ever. The one is swift-moving. The other a deep stillness.
I asked about the other voices that came to me, contradicting, interfering.
- They are the voices of unformed souls, my true voice said. They are between lives, between being animals and men. They repeat things they have heard, without knowing what they mean. They are mischievous like idle children. You can hear these voices in any silence. They are the twittering shades of the Greeks. It is they who gave the Hebrews the idea of Sheol, of a grey underworld of hopelessness, neither good nor evil. There is no need to be afraid of them, nor sorry for them. They are only waiting their turn to live.
But are there sometimes real spirits of the dead, who would want to do harm to the living?
- Yes, if they are those of men or women who gave themselves into the power of evil while they were alive. They have left the true path and entered into the Devil’s, and they obey him. They become like devils.
If a man can become like a devil, can he also become like an angel? Is there no eternal difference between angels and men?
- None, the voice answered. Men become like angels. That is their perfection.
Is there only one Path towards Perfection? I asked. The Path of Suffering?
- There are as many paths as there are men and women, the voice answered. Yours is not suffering, nor being an ascetic. Yours is to tell what you have heard and seen, and will hear and see; and to be obedient. Yours is the way of Enlightenment.
Is that a much longer way than the path of Suffering, or the path of Wisdom?
- Wisdom is not a path. It is the end of every path. Suffering is the shortest way to it, the straightest, and the best. It is like climbing a sheer cliff to reach the summit of a mountain. Obedience is like walking round and round the mountain, along a path that climbs slowly. But the air is beautiful, and the path reaches the same goal at the end.
And Enlightenment?
- Enlightenment makes swift leaps from one spiral to another, and shortens the path of obedience. But there is always the danger of a fall.
Is the Tao a way that Europeans can follow?
- No. There is too much noise in Europe and the West. You need to listen to the stars to follow the way of the Tao.
How can we listen to the stars?
- They make sounds. They vibrate. They influence the earth. And the earth has its own vibrations. You must listen for those and feel them with your body and your mind. I have told you, the earth and the stars are living beings. If you listen they will speak to you.
No one will believe this.
- The Chinese who follow the Tao have believed it for five thousand years.
What good has it done them?
- They have found the easiest way of all. They are moving with the current and not against it. The earth and the stars flow towards Perfection, towards the goal. It is their nature. They went out from the centre in the beginning. They flow back towards it. If you go with them you will arrive without effort.
What you are saying means nothing, at least to me.
- That is why you must be obedient. You are like a blind man finding a path through a forest. You have to hold someone’s hand. If you could see you could find your own way.
Am I surrounded by dangers I cannot see?
- By thousands.
What sort of dangers?
- Evil spirits.
No one believes in evil spirits.
- I know. The evil spirits are delighted.
Are they the only dangers?
- Are they not enough?
But how can they influence our lives?
- In every way. You have a spirit life that runs parallel to your life of the body in the world. They can injure you in that life if you give them the opportunity and that injury is mirrored in the life of your body. In accidents, ill health, misfortunes, and much worse than those, by leading you into evil. Men who feel that there is a curse on them are often right. But they will have brought it on themselves.
And does the way of the Tao avoid this?
- It can. If you follow a safe path you are less likely to stumble. If you move with the current of the river you move faster with less effort. I have told you, the Tao is the way of the Universe, it is the way the Universe flows, as it moves towards Perfection.
And the spirit life we lead? Is this the same as our body’s life?
- No. It only affects it. Your spirit is quite different from your body. Your spirit contains all your bodies, all your past and future lives. It is growing like a plant growing, fulfilling itself. Just as the Universe grows, expands into fulfilment, and moves towards Perfection, so your spirit is developing and growing. You would not recognise it as the spirit of a man. It looks quite different. But what happens to it affects your body immediately. And what happens to your body affects your spirit, helps or hinders it. Or injures it. But they are separate.
Is this spirit the same as my soul?
- No. Your spirit is your entirety, all that you have been, and are, and will be. It is the real You. The whole of You. Your soul lives within this entirety, at its centre. It has no Will, no consciousness of its own. It is like a singer’s voice, the flame of a candle, the blossom of a flower. The voice is not the same as the singer. But it is the singer’s purpose to make the voice perfect, to bring it to its predestined perfection. That is the spirit’s task with the soul. The body is not even an essential part of the spirit, it is an incident in the spirit’s progress. The spirit is the gardener. The soul is the garden. The body is something the gardener uses for a time and then discards, like a wheelbarrow, or a spade. He needs it, and is done with it, and lays it aside. It wears out and he replaces it. It is not the gardener. Nor the garden.
But a wheelbarrow is not alive. Surely I am more than that?
- Yes. When the gardener uses a wheelbarrow it remains a thing. When the spirit takes a new body, the body becomes a part of the spirit’s wholeness, it takes on the spirit’s life. The spirit is in it. But the spirit is not it. I am giving you images. Take them as images and not as the reality.
THE BODY
At a certain level of awareness the body ceases to be a burden. One can leave it down – like a wheelbarrow – one can translate one’s mind and consciousness to a distant place as quickly as thought flies. This is because the body, and time, and space, are not as you think they are. Just as a telephone can link two sides of the world, so can thought. And more powerfully.
How can one reach such a level of awareness?
- By learning to be still. To acquire inner stillness. That is the beginning of all knowledge. If you are always asking questions you cannot hear the answers.
How can I learn to be still?
- By emptying your mind. You are always busy. Learn to do nothing. Think of nothing. Do not even listen. Spend half an hour not doing, not thinking.
That’s impossible.
- No. If you find it hard, say the Rosary. Say the familiar words, but do not hear them. Do not think of them. There are many ways of praying. This is one. Emptiness. Of course the empty space must be clean. You are inviting God there.
How can it be made clean? Do you mean, without sin? Without impure thoughts?
- That of course. And without desires, without urgency. Also it must be physically clean. You need to eat the right foods, abstain from the wrong ones. You know that alcohol blunts the mind. Thickens it. So do certain foods. Just as they affect the body, so they affect the mind. A man who eats meat has a certain type of body. The meat forms his body. And he has a certain type of mind also. The meat forms it. I am not speaking only of meat. Many foods prevent the mind from hearing. Alcohol, tobacco, all drugs do. Many fruits and vegetables that are innocent in themselves or even beneficial in some ways, prevent the mind from receiving spiritual advice.
Must one then follow a strict diet in order to be saved?
- Not at all. One can be saved in a thousand ways. But if one wishes to follow any of the paths of the spirit, one must mould one’s body accordingly. One must eat this and reject that. One must do certain exercises for the body, so that the body can serve the mind properly, and be subject to it.
Am I to write down what these foods and exercises are?
- Later. Very few will follow the advice. But for those who do, stillness becomes possible. and they can hear with their minds.
Can they also learn to see with their minds? With their third eye?
- Of course. What is an eye for, if not to see?
And there is really a Third Eye?
- Yes.
Is it in the forehead?
- No. That is only an image of the reality. The inner ear which allows you to hear me – does that grow out of the top of your head? It is inside your mind. So is the Third Eye. But it is harder to see than to hear.
When one learns to see, what kind of vision will one have?
- It depends where one looks. One could see a friend far away. One could see other planets. One could see God.
Is this travelling out of the body, such as some psychic mediums describe?
- No. That is much easier, and the traveller stays in this world and quite close to his ordinary body. If he went too far from it the link would break and his body would die.
If he stays away too long will he also die?
- Yes. One can even put a limit of time and space for such travelling. A hundred kilometres, an hour or so. It is really a trick, and not in any way a spiritual experience. It is a kind of psychic conjuring and not worth the trouble.
But if one did it, would people see one in two places at once? Could they see one as one travelled?
- It can be. Sometimes such journeys happen by accident, from intensity of thought, or genuine necessity. Then the traveller can be seen, usually at the far end of the journey. Or the spirit-conjurer can make himself seen, if he knows how.
Castaneda speaks of learning to see a separate reality of the body, and of the body leaping down from high cliffs and back again. Is this true?
- Yes. It can be done. And the separate reality he writes about is merely the body’s true form. An intertwining and revolving of bands of energy that appear to the Third Eye as bands of light. The real body has the shape of a candle flame, and something of its appearance, with an inner complexity of movement.
Is this the same as the aura that mediums claim to see?
- Yes. But what most mediums see is the outer fringe of the flame.
And do these aura have colours? And do the colours have a meaning?
- Yes. The purest auras are white, or almost white. The more worldly or wicked the individual is, the darker the aura, until someone truly evil is surrounded by blackness, a complete absence of light. There are very few at either end of the spectrum.
Do the colours also reflect character? Red for anger? Green for jealousy?
- No. Not in that way. Red shows aggression, ambition, rather than anger. Green shows meekness, humility of mind or body,
growth towards perfection. Yellow means someone who is striving for perfection. The intensity and shade of the colour show the degree of the quality. The nearer to white, the nearer to perfection. The more intense, the stronger the ruling passion. One can have a colour that is both dark and strong. And another that is both pale and weak. One needs to see to understand.
How can one learn to see?
- In the same way that you have learned to hear. By emptying your mind, of thoughts, of pictures. That is the first step.
AURAS
White = Perfection, contains all colours.
Black = Evil, contains no colours.
Violet = Lust, hatred, wickedness, despair.
Indigo = Selfishness, greed, passion.
Blue = Love, kindness, warmth.
Green = Humility, meekness, hope, growth towards perfection.
Yellow = Seeking perfection, coldness.
Orange = Ambition, egotism, hardness.
Red = Strength, desire, aggression.
WAITING
Learn to wait. For everything. For learning. For achievement. For me. Learn to wait without impatience, without longing. Learn to be content with now. Learn to exist in the now. To be. Not to think always, I will be. Think, I am. This is to strive to be like God.
THE MIND
The body is part of the mind. As the body is, so is the mind.
Then does a cripple have a crippled mind? A hunchback a distorted mind?
- No. I am speaking of the real body, that I have described to you. But what happens to the outer, physical body affects the real body through the mind. The mind links the two bodies. The mind is the real body. If the mind allows itself to be distorted by the accidents that happen to the material body, then the real body does become crippled. But this need not happen, and these distortions of the outer body can be blessings from which the mind and real body gain in strength.
And if the mind is imbecile? If it is like a vegetable? Say a mongol child, or a hydrocephalic lying always in bed, barely conscious? Would it not be better if such unfortunates never lived?
- How do you know they are unfortunate? How do you know anything of their innermost mind and life? An apparent imbecile may spend his inward life absorbed in the contemplation of God. The Hydrocephalic may not move or speak because he is listening to God.
But some imbeciles are clearly miserable. They are distraught. They are a danger to themselves and others.
- You are talking about the mad and the possessed, which is one and the same thing. That is different.
You mean possessed by evil spirits? But no one believes in that.
- I have said before, nothing delights evil spirits so much as that disbelief. Have you never heard of poltergeists?
Of course. Are they really cases of possession?
- What else do you think they are? They are spirits that take possession of children, about the age of puberty, when the children have the greatest degree of undirected force.
I don’t understand.
- You do understand. Do you think children cannot deliver themselves over to evil?
How does it happen?
- A child is malicious, or discontented, or troubled, often with reason. At a certain stage it possesses great psychic strength that is meant to help it to become mature, just as a plant has surges of growth and sap. The child may put this energy at the disposal of an evil or of a mischievous spirit, or of unformed minds of the kind I have described to you before. Of minds waiting to become human. And the psychic energy can then be translated into physical action. It is like electricity. The wandering, evil or mischievous minds need a source of physical energy to use before they can achieve physical results. This happens with every kind of evil. This is the meaning of being possessed.
Could one also be possessed by good spirits?
- Yes, of course! Of course! This is the whole business of a human life. Of every life your mind and soul ever lead. As plant, animal, man, and afterwards, in your next lives. To become possessed by good. That is your whole goal and aim and purpose. Do you think you could reach God without help?
How can one be possessed by good?
- One must pray. One must be still. One must listen.
But most people have no time for that.
- They must make time.
But they must earn a living, look after families!
- Is that what takes up all their waking hours? A man – a woman must make their worldly life complete. Out of this completeness comes fulfilment, and their next life.
I don’t understand.
- They must make their lives tranquil. Even a life of suffering. Of disappointment. They can still achieve completeness. They can welcome the suffering. Accept the disappointment as the Will of God. Be glad of it. Be content to wait.
Then nothing would ever get done. No one would be ambitious, or work hard or struggle.
- Sometimes that might be better. Struggle for what? More important still, struggle in what manner? Do you want to die rich, or good?
Is it wrong to want to become rich, and famous, successful?
- Successful at what?
Anything. Making boots?
- If the boots are the best the man can make, and he sells them at the fairest price, and loves the people who are going to use them, then that is a good ambition.
He would go bankrupt.
- You have answered your own question.
There would be no business done in the world!
- Do you imagine that in Paradise men will spend their time making and selling things?
But if no one made and sold, even for selfish reasons, there would be no industry, no trade, no clothes, no machines, no medicine, no food. Half the world would die in a month.
- More than half.
And do you want that?
- No.
I don’t understand you.
- The world has taken ten thousand years to get into its present state. It cannot be cured overnight. But it needs curing. A man who has ruined his health by overeating and indulgence all his life cannot be cured by giving up all his bad habits at once. He must change gradually or he will die of the change, even the change towards good. But he still needs to change.
But what about the good things that come from industry and machines? The books, the music, the cheap food, the cheap clothes, the houses? The travel, the ways of seeing the world, of becoming educated? Do you want us to go back to the Stone Age?
- What do you know about the Stone Age?
Nothing. Except that men could not live like that today even if it was good to do so. There are too many of us.
- How many of you have good books, and good music, and enough good food and good houses, and education?
But your way, there would be still less.
- Do you really understand my way?
No.
- Then why not listen? Men must work. But they must work for different reasons. They must work to serve, not to gain. Look at your world. Do men make things to serve or to gain? Do they care about other people?
Sometimes.
- Then those times they are right.
But the Church Itself doesn’t teach this.
- It does. Often It fails to listen to Itself, but that is what it teaches. I keep saying to you, listen. Be quiet and listen.
This is a long way from the mind, that you began to tell me about.
- No. This is the answer to your question about the Mind. You asked me, what is the mind? I am telling you what it is. It is your real life. All the worldly things that seem to you so important have no meaning at all except as they serve the mind.
You spoke of making one’s life complete. How can one do that?
- By doing everything in the world as one should. In the world one has a worldly task. You must do it perfectly. It may not succeed, but you must succeed. You must make yourself good in every way. Then you are complete, like an egg. And you are ready to be born again.
This is only mysticism.
- Only?
A woman, say, whose husband is a failure, and whose children are failures, spends her life in torment because of them. However good she is, can she be complete, and tranquil?
- If she accepts the Will of God, yes.
But that is just quiescence! Despair! Surely she must go on trying?
- So far as is sensible, yes. After that she must accept, be quiescent. Be inwardly quiet. And why was her husband a failure, and her children a torment to her? Was any of it her fault?
Thinking that is not going to make her inwardly quiet.
- But it may make her better. And it might help her family to be better. The same applies to husbands, children, everyone. To come to terms with their faults. Not to accept them, but purge them. This is a very old doctrine. I am surprised you need to have it explained to you. This is the whole task of the mind. To purge itself, and prepare for the next life. Surely you have been told this before?
People will be furious if I try to tell them all this. They’ll throw stones at me.
- I Know.
No one wants to hear these things.
- I know.
DESIRE
Is it right to have desires, or ambitions?
- One should desire union with God. One should have the ambition to serve God. Nothing else.
ON RELIGIONS
Was Buddha God, or a man?
- He was a man who achieved union with God.
And Mahomet?
- Mahomet was a man.
Did he achieve union with God?
- No.
Was he evil?
- No. But his work led to evil.
Is it difficult for a Mohammedan to reach God?
- No more than for anyone else. But being a Mohammedan does not help him, and may hinder him.
Yet Mohammedan mystics seem like Christian mystics. They describe the same visions.
- All mystics see the same visions. But some starting points are better than others. Yet once the journey is begun the starting point no longer matters.
Are there other religions that are a hindrance to finding God?
- Yes. Many. Only the Catholic Faith contains the entire Truth.
ON DIET
What should one eat?
- If one wants to hear, and to see?
Yes.
- One should give up all foods that interfere with hearing and seeing. One should give up meat, and alcohol, and tobacco. That is the beginning. One should give up all drugs, like tea and coffee. All sweet things made with sugar. And there are many other things that are either harmful or useless.
Do you want to describe them?
- No. Once someone begins to hear correctly he or she will be told what to eat, and what to avoid.
Even what you have said already is too hard for most people.
- Then they will never hear correctly.
But many people hear without making any sacrifice in what they eat and drink.
- Yes. But what do they hear?
And people take drugs in order to see visions.
- Yes. But what visions do they see?
Some are good.
- They are not good. At best they are amusements. At worst they can lead to Hell. Taking drugs is a hard path that needs long training, and it is still worthless.
Monks and nuns go on hard, pure diets. Do they hear correctly?
- Yes. If they also learn to listen. Often they are too afraid of what they hear, and reject it. Or they are ordered by their superiors not to listen.
Is this what God wants?
- No.
Why are you telling me these things?
- So that you can tell others. God wants everyone to listen. And obey.
But they will hear so many voices, even when they have prepared themselves. How can they tell true from false?
- They must learn. Exactly as one learns anything else that is difficult. By constant effort.
No one will believe any of this.
- Some will believe.
TIME
Time is simply a convention. In reality, all things are happening now. There is only now. Time is like a space in which everything exists in the same moment. What you were, and are, and will be, all exist together. In the world, you see only a fragment of this space, as if you were walking through a small valley. Do you imagine the rest of the landscape has ceased to exist or has not yet come into existence because you cannot see it?
Even the spirit body I have told you of is only part of your reality. Each of your lives has a material body and a spirit body connected with it. And each life is connected to the others, and all are held together by your real self, your mind, and your soul. Like a wheel, the spokes holding the rim together. With a centre. The wheel turns, and progresses, but you do not say, ‘that part of the wheel was, and this part is, and that other part is not yet.’ The wheel must travel towards God, and perfect itself. But it is not travelling through space, or time. It is travelling in reality through eternity.
I cannot understand that.
- I know. Do not try.
You say ‘my real self, and my mind, and my soul.’ Are they all different? Are there three things in me?
Yes and no. It is like the Trinity. The mind is like the Father. The self is like the Son. The soul is like the Holy Spirit. If you can understand the Trinity, you can understand my answer. The mind informs and is the entire person. It makes the whole. It is the whole. The self is what it makes, it is what it is. The soul is the energy of the mind, the yearning towards God. Just as the Holy Spirit is God’s yearning towards man.
FREE WILL
If Time does not exist, and everything is, then is there no Free Will?
- There is, and there is not. What will happen has already happened, it is happening. And yet it can be changed.
How? Surely change means time passing, and you say there is no time?
- No. But as well as everything that is, there is also the shadow of everything that could be. If you imagine things happening it is because they could happen. You cannot imagine the impossible. You can imagine the very strange, not the impossible.
I don’t understand.
- It does not matter. Imagine a thousand possible lives for everyone, each depending on choices they make at different moments. Imagine a traveller with a thousand possible journeys and combinations of journeys in front of him. All those journeys exist. The places he could visit, pass through. They all exist now. And he makes his choice now. Seen from one point of view he is travelling from one place to another, hesitating at a cross roads, entering a cul-de-sac, turning back, going towards danger, turning away from it, perhaps without even knowing it was there, at last reaching a goal – the one he set himself, or another; or else failing to reach any goal, and becoming lost, and dying of despair. That is how you see him.
But from God’s point of view he is already there. And in all the places he has chosen to be. His journey takes no time at all, his choices take no time at all, because there is no time. And yet he makes the choices, and could have made others.
The Mind is the totality of one’s Being, it is all embracing and formless. It has no form or shape or substance. It is. The Self is the form and shape the Mind gives to itself, so that it may see itself. The Soul is the energy the mind possesses to form the Self. It is the link between Self and Mind, and is in both of them, and becomes both of them.
The Mind is Being, Potential. It contains all possibilities.
The Soul is Life, that the Mind breathes into the Self.
The Self is Consciousness.
THE SOUL AND REINCARNATION
The soul passes through a series of animal shapes, from the simplest, a single cell, to the human, to other shapes beyond the human. The mind creates these shapes. As it gains experience and strength it progresses from the simple to the complex.
This progress is not merely one of complexity, but also of morality. It is essential that each incarnation of the mind should be a striving for perfection. The cell must be a perfect cell. The flower a perfect flower. The wolf a perfect wolf. It is in achieving this momentary perfection that the mind can advance to a higher incarnation for the soul to dwell in.
But when it progresses the previous incarnations do not cease to exist. They continue as part of the totality of the mind. These forms remain as part of the mind’s whole form. Each incarnation is like the petal of a flower. All of them together make up the blossom.